5 Ways You Can Make 2015 A Great Year For Your Music

2015 is upon us, and with that always comes resolutions for the new year. For most, it’s all about losing weight, stop smoking, or getting a better job, but what about music?

For the new year, I think the best thing for any beatmaker or producer to do is to work on their music, and aim to get better at various music-related things such as networking and selling beats.

Here are 5 ways you can make 2015 a great year for your music.

1. Make Better Beats

There are many ways you can do this. Whenever I want to take my beats to the next level, the first thing I do is make a plan. You may be tempted to want to just dive into the studio and start making beats, but instead you need to chill out and reassess what you’re about to do.

The first thing is to make a schedule. What you need to do is forget about actually making beats and work on perfecting separate details of your music. For example, you could break it down like this on a weekly schedule:

Monday: drum work

Tuesday: bassline work

Wednesday: listen to various forms of music

Thursday: mixing work

Friday: pattern work

This is just to give you a rough idea of where you could go with this. By working on single things each day, you’ll be able to improve each area significantly, rather than just making beats and crossing your fingers it comes out right.

Just imagine if your drums were really dope, and your bassline was sick, your patterns were on point, and your mixing was top notch. Nobody would be able to deny your music.

I mention on Wednesday that you take a break and just listen to music. It could be digging through your vinyl collection, or just browsing Spotify, but either way it’s a great way to open your mind to various forms of music, with ideas that you could apply to your own music.

2. Networking Will Help You Tremendously/strong>

I have mentioned networking many times in the past year alone, and with good reason: it’s how you will sell more beats. myFlashStore’s selling system is fantastic, but too many producers and beatmakers rely on it as their sole way of selling beats. Instead, you should find other ways of getting potential buyers to visit your myFlashStore page, and a lot of that is with networking.

For some, networking could mean you hit up local shows and chat up various artists with the hopes of them introducing you to other people they know. For others, networking could mean just building an email list. No matter what networking means to you, it’s an essential part of you getting more beat sales.

These are some of the ways you can network:

Forum communities

Local music events

Word of mouth through friends and family

Email lists

Contacting various blog owners

Directly contacting other producers and artists

3. Sell More Beats

This is what you’re after, isn’t it? Well, 2015 could be your year, but you have to work really hard to sell more beats. The good thing is that you’re in the right spot – myFlashStore. The bad news is that you have to find ways of selling more.

Your beats might not be that good. It’s hard to hear, but there’s a chance your beats are not up to par with what buyers want. I know a producer that makes 90’s style Boom Bap beats and he never went far with them. He kept telling me that nobody today wants to buy or even hear 90’s Boom Bap, and that’s why he didn’t sell any.

I had to disagree with him.

It’s not that nobody wants to buy or hear that style of music, it’s just that his beats weren’t that good. I mean, don’t get me wrong, his beats were good, but not necessarily the type that buyers would want. There’s actually a big market for those types of beats right now (because everything comes back in style eventually), but his beats were just kind of plain. That’s it.

But if your beats are not that good, maybe it’s time you stepped your game up. There are plenty of ways for you to improve your beats, and once you’re ready, make a plan for how many beat sales you want to get in 2015.

I don’t know what kind of number you’re thinking of, but let’s say you want to sell 100 beats in 2015. It might be way out of your league, and that’s fine, but that’s the number you’re aiming for. You may not reach that number, but I guarantee that if that’s your goal, you will at least end up selling more than you did in 2014 because you will be pushing yourself and you have a goal in mind.

There’s nothing wrong with not reaching your desired number of 100, because even if you reach 60, it’s still more than you did without a goal.

4. Protect Your Beats

Just recently I wrote about what you should do once your beat is stolen. For 2015, your goal should be to NOT have your beat stolen, which means you need to protect your beats.

First of all, back up your beats. Either have them copied to a second hard drive, or do like what most beatmakers are doing today, and back them up to the cloud. It could be Dropbox or Google Drive, it’s doesn’t matter. Just back them up regularly.

Second, use voice tags. You could attempt to do them yourself, or you could get some done here with myFlashStore’s service. By getting tags, at least you’ll know your beats are somewhat safe, and it makes it that much harder for the bad guys to jack your beats.

The other thing you can do is to copyright your beats. I know a lot of beatmakers probably won’t bother, but if you’re serious and want to take all precautions, all you have to do is find the right form at your government’s copyright website and you’re all set.

5. Establish Yourself

Let’s face that facts – it seems like everyone is making beats. That shouldn’t discourage you, but it should definitely make you think of new ways to make your beats stand out.

A producer like J Dilla had a big influence on Hip Hop and that’s because his beats stood out from the rest. While others were sampling popular samples, he would be digging for obscure stuff and cutting it up to sound like something else. Because of all that, Dilla easily became a big name in the production world.

2015 is the year for you to establish yourself. Everyone wants to make changes, so this is it. No more lounging around and waiting until tomorrow to make a beat – do it now.

If you don’t have a profile set up yet at myFlashStore, you can take care of that now. You should also look into advertising your page, or if you have your own website. Banner ad space can be expensive, but keep looking around and you will eventually find a website that’s cheaper than others. It may not drive tons of traffic to your beat page, but you never know what it could bring.